With 2014 being my fourth year on the Albertus Magnus women’s tennis team, my team and I had high expectations for the season. After all, the year before we finally made it to the GNAC play offs for the first time in many years. As our season begun, we became more doubtful with regards to our hopes of making the playoffs again because we had lost a lot of players from last year’s team due to graduation. Three new players joined the team. Kelsea Wildman, who was recruited by Coach to play for us, played at Hamden High School. Shamain McAllister and Chelcie Roan are freshmen who had never touched a tennis racket before.
The experienced girls on the team, me included, knew this would be a challenge for us as Shamain and Chelcie would be starting from scratch while we were still trying to create a strong team. During practices all the experienced players and Coach would give tips to the Shamain and Chelcie and would show Chelcie how to hold the racket before hitting the ball and tell Shamain to watch her feet as she approached the ball. Renita Moore often played practice games with Shamain and Chelcie to help improve their game under match conditions. Sogona Sacko played with Kelsea often during practice. Kelsea was a newbie to the college, but not new to the sport as she showed what it took to be an affluent factor in our wins. Last but not least, Zaida Velazco always showed all of us how to battle on the court while keeping an open mind in playing each match. She told us never to go in to a match expecting to lose because you are halfway defeated at that point.
This season our team didn’t make it to the playoffs as our final record was 3 wins and 9 losses. We were expecting better, but under the circumstances of having new players on the team, I believe it was a real learning and teaching experience for us in terms of sharing what Coach had taught us in the previous years to the two inexperienced girls on the team. This helped in terms of everyone sharing the load in teaching the new girls and took some of the load off Coach and myself as the team captain because we worked as a team in critique. We didn’t meet our goal of making the playoffs, but we still had a successful season and more importantly had fun with each other and also improved our tennis game. We also gained so much in perseverance and realizing the importance of having a strong foundation to build on.
Malika Grant
Hometown: Brooklyn
Year: Senior